Folk-poetic roots in the prose of Nicolay Gogol in the first half of the 1830s: from “The evenings…” to “Mirgorod”

About the author:

Anastasia A. Semenova,

Abstract:

In this paper the phenomenon of folk poetry is considered as the element of Logos congruity strategy in the Russian literature of the 19th century in early prose by N. Gogol. The author differentiates between the concepts “folklorism”, “conception of folklore”, “folk poetry in literature”. Dynamics of folk poetry from a cycle to a cycle is tracked through a correlation of certain elements. A substratum of three sources (musical, plastic, picturesque) is outlined as a text-generating intention. Grounds for the writer`s ideas about the spirit of the nation are observed. The sings of substantivity of the spontaneous life are determined: vocabulary connected with thunder, claps of thunder; the topic of mountains. Integrity of the mythopoetics encompasses the figure of a little devil, who often bears a structurally necessary element of the myth about spring fertility acquired by the God Gromovick. The song is seen as a source of cyclical links in which the existence of a character is complicated (he crosses the border from the “own” space to “alien”). The folk-poetic in comprehension of the words “peace” and “border” is revealed in the category: light/heat/fire/water; walls/circle; rain/cloudburst; thunder/storm/lightning /mountain/rock. The religious conception of folklore initially motivates Gogol’s artistic thinking, balance and connection between ethics and aesthetics, limits and freedom of self-expression, his sense of “spiritual repose”.

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